Date set for orbit correction as ISS awaits new crew's March arrival

The procedure is scheduled for February 17

MOSCOW, February 1. /TASS/. Mission Control operators will correct the orbit of the International Space Center (ISS) on February 17 ahead of a new crew arriving, an official at the Moscow region flight command center told TASS on Monday.

The procedure is scheduled to deliver most favorable conditions for a Soyuz TMA-20M vehicle to dock carrying Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka aboard alongside NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams. They will take off from the space launch center at Baikonur in Kazakhstan on March 19.

The ISS crew currently aboard are Russian cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko, Mikhail Korniyenko and Sergey Volkov together with US astronauts Timothy Kopra and Scott Kelly along with the European Space Agency’s astronaut Timothy Peake.

Back-up crew for those heading to the orbiter are Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko from Russia together with American Robert Kimbrough.